


Bed, Knobs, and Broomsticks

by tigersilver



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff and Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 17:13:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16391837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersilver/pseuds/tigersilver
Summary: For the 2010 HD Birthday Bash Fest. AU; EWE, rimming, Bottom!Draco (if you care about these things, and that's no guarantee for next time:) Set just post-war Trials, in June of '98.





	Bed, Knobs, and Broomsticks

Fandom: HP  
Pairing: H/D  
Rating: NC-17   
Word Count: 12, 200  
Warnings/Notes: AU; EWE, rimming, Bottom!Draco (if you care about these things, and that's no guarantee for next time:) Set just post-war Trials, in June of '98.    
  


 

��

For years, Harry hadn’t the slightest idea when Draco Malfoy’s birthday was and he couldn’t much be arsed to care, had someone asked him to pinpoint it. He was vaguely aware the other boy was older than he was (he was certainly taller, which  _felt_  like ‘older’, in much the same way ‘pointy’ felt like ‘irksome git’) and he disdained it. So what if the git was older—or taller—or better-looking, or some other attribute Harry couldn’t claim and didn’t give a rat’s arse about?

If the oily, stuck-up prat was his elder, the most it meant was that Harry might outlive him in the grand scheme of things, and therefore  _win_ —obscurely and always providing he outlived Voldemort first. Needless to say, he didn’t waste much time thinking on the topic. He’d better things to do.

It did wax and wroth rather hairy for a while; looking very grim indeed for Harry in the Forbidden Forest and in the Great Hall. After the dust settled, he didn’t have much time to bother himself over other people’s life markers—he’d problems of his own, thanks. The destruction wreaked upon Hogwarts, the home he’d known for years; the unending toll of the dead and the wounded, a ghastly  _contrapunto_  which never left him, sleeping or waking; and the startling and rather salutary fact he was now solely responsible for the daily ordering of his own life. For, after Hermione departed, there was no one to say ‘Harry, go do this,’ or ‘Harry, I expect that,’ or even ‘Potter! You have detention!’ Then, too, there were his nightmares, which hadn’t ceased, only changed focus, moving from featuring the nightly Voldemort-sponsored horror- _du jour_  to the explicit specific scenes of Harry’s own losses. And, after the funerals, there were the Trials to occupy him.

War crimes trials were a nasty business. Harry was forced to spend nearly every waking hour at the Ministry, and much of that trapped in a wooden stand beneath the quivering noses of the Wizangamot, testifying for or against various individuals. This included the Malfoys, and Harry paid attention in particular to Draco Malfoy, who looked peaky—and a great deal older than his seventeen—eighteen?—years.

The Wizangamot nattered often amongst themselves concerning the age of majority and whether schoolchildren, as such, should be considered underage because of their status, despite their actual dates of birth. Some, they allowed, had been without doubt compelled to actions by their attached adults that might or might not have been their first choice—or their true inclination. Harry thought Draco Malfoy was a prime candidate for that category, as he’d watched him—all unwillingly—flinching, ill and pasty-white when he was forced to torture Voldemort’s prisoners or made to stand still and observe his father humiliated and his mother threatened. Those moments, oddly enough, reminded Harry of his own parents and tangentially, led him to think long and deeply of how their lives might’ve been, had they survived. And his own, naturally.

Draco Malfoy had this weird expression on his pallid face about him whenever Harry saw him in passing—the Malfoys had been ‘detained’ by the Ministry, pending further investigation, and conveniently so, whilst their home was raided for Dark leftovers and such—and more and more often Harry would catch those startling pale, bloodshot grey eyes trained steadily upon him, usually when Draco was called up to testify as to the deposition of other Hogwarts students, the ex-Slytherins in particular. He stared back, of course, unflinching.

The Wizamgamot actively debated just how they wished to handle the rehabilitation of minors and those that had just reached their majority whilst Voldemort was his worst. Draco, as it turned out, was the star witness for Greg Goyle and the likes of Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini, Theo Nott and Adrian Pucey. Crabbe, Jr. was dead, of course, and couldn’t be defended, even though Draco, coming into his own as a brilliant  _ad hoc_  barrister, offered up that Greg had been greatly influenced to the Dark by his own father, an unabashed Death Eater. Goyle himself was as stone-still as a small mountain and silent as a tomb throughout his trial and it was only Draco’s spirited testimony that got him probation instead of Azkaban for life. The children of the other convicted or deceased Death Eaters were generally meted out similar sentences, all due to Draco’s enlightened argument and testimony: probationary periods and community service, learning a trade or profession, but then Wizangamot was of a mind to be tolerably kind and magnanimously forgiving, as that particular group of teenagers were all manifestly still enrolled at Hogwarts throughout wartime; could be considered youngsters even after, and, as Draco pointed out, had been as much at their parent’s mercy as his own parents had been at the Dark Lord’s.

Harry’s testimony—under Veritaserum and not—generally dovetailed with Draco’s more concise and organized efforts, though they never were given the opportunity to confer. After all, he’d borne witness to many of the same events, from a Voldemort’s-eye view, and he was very much aware of who’d been Imperius’d and who’d genuinely bought into the whole Death Eater dogma, minor or no. In a sense, he and Draco were a team, fighting back-to-back and valiantly for the rights and lives of their unfortunate peers, all of whom had had their lives influenced by Voldemort, no matter whose ‘side’ their parents had chosen.

That secret connexion, and the constant burning glances Draco Malfoy sent his way daily—unreadable, indescribable glances that were just brimful of all sorts of emotions Harry couldn’t quite decipher—gave him something to mull over in place of the hideous mental replays of people dying: Sirius, Fred, Dumbledore…Snape.

It was over Severus Snape that Draco and Harry truly bonded, from across the wide space of the Wizangamot meeting room and without a word ever spoken directly. Harry’s feelings about his Potion’s Professor were conflicting and many, deep as houses and all tinged with a lingering feeling of regret. Draco, for all that he’d issues with his Head of House in the recent past, quite clearly still revered the man, and leapt at every opportunity to defend him. Harry, armed at last with the incontrovertible knowledge of all Snape had done for the sake of Lily Potter’s son—i.e. himself—stepped forward to do the same. The looks Draco sent him became softer, and easier, somehow, to decode.

Harry, with still a fair chunk of downtime on his hands when he wasn’t actively standing in the midst of a large group of beady-eyed adults quizzing him, thought more and more of Draco after hours, spending  _his_  free time housed at the grey corridors of Wizarding government—the very same ones his father used to pace with such a fine show of near-ownership. He thought about Draco’s arms tightening about his waist during the Fiendfyre; he remembered Draco’s deliberately waffling over identifying him when he’d been Snatched (because he’d known, for a fact, that Draco recognized him right off and had very deliberately acted to save him; there’d never been the slightest doubt about  _that_ ); he closed his eyes and could recall again the rush of wind sounding off Draco’s broom at Quidditch matches and the antagonistic grey eyes that had always sought his instantly whenever they’d occupied the same space.

And he thought about the states of childhood, and adulthood, and how there’d been no real celebratory marker for either of them when they’d crossed that invisible line from one to the other. And it left him sad—and inspired, as well.

Off Harry went then, when the Trials ended and he was at Hogwarts to help with the rebuilding. To Diagon Alley, in the midst of being rebuilt, where he did some shopping, a task that both delighted and repulsed him. Christmas and birthdays had always been of huge importance to Harry, at first for the gifts he didn’t receive and then, after he finally been delivered his Hogwart’s letter, for the ones he  _did_. Someone, Harry reasoned, should ensure Draco realized his birthday (his eighteenth, as Hermione had enlightened him) was an important occasion—that Harry would’ve missed him terribly if he’d not survived to have another one.

Which impulse was what delivered him to the Malfoy residence on the steamy bright morning of June 19th, a fortnight after the Malfoys had been given leave to return home, and a full two weeks and a day after—per Harry’s recent knowledge--the anniversary of Draco’s Malfoy’s 18th year on the planet.

“Er, Draco, please?” he enquired of the house elf who answered the Malfoy front door. “May I speak with him?”

“Master Harry Potter! Master Harry Potter!”

The elf evidently hadn’t heard of Hermione’s much-trumpeted calls for emancipation; he—or she (Harry couldn’t tell, as the elf was excessively elderly) was beside him or herself with excitement, in any road. Harry, fortunately, had grown used to this reaction and had developed a way of dealing with it, which Hermione would absolutely  _not_  approve of.

“Master Harry Potter! Oh, Master Harry Potter!” the elf twittered on, twirling. He’d have gone on like that for ages if Harry hadn’t shushed him.

“Here, now, leave off at once!” Harry ordered sharply, mid-litany, “or you’ll need to go punish yourself for fussing! You’ll have to iron your ears or bang your head or—or something dire!”

“The great Harry Potter wishes Skipsy not to be fussing?” the elf asked, hesitantly. “Master is sure? Master is certain? Master will not change Master’s mind? Master will not punish Skipsy later?”

Harry nodded decisively. Elves adored him, for some reason, and he’d gotten quite used to them tripping over themselves to please him. He shrugged off this unasked adulation like a duck in a downpour.

“Absolutely none of that, er, Skipsy—and no special sweets or promises of self-sacrifice needed, are we clear?” Harry commanded, with a wince (Dobby was yet another familiar face in his nightmares) “or anything  _else_ out of the way, for that matter. Just let me speak with Draco, please. Tell him I’m here to see him, if you will.”

“…Young Master,” the elf was still hesitant. He (Harry decided he was a ‘he’ because he was tired of caring one way or another) wrung his gnarled little hands and jittered between toe and heel, like a bobber on a fishing line. “Young Master never is rising so early in the day, Master Harry Potter. I cannot wakes him. Oh, oh--whatever shall Skipsy do?” He clutched the ears in question and fidgeted.

“Well, go and wake him anyway, Skipsy,” Harry replied calmly, and made a shooing motion with the hand that wasn’t clutching two Shrunken packets and the handle of his own replacement broom. He promptly leaned that against the door, realizing he didn’t need to keep hold of it. “That lazy slug-a-bed,” Harry went on, sneering just a bit. “He should be up and about; it’s almost nine already.”

“You is certain, Master Harry Potter? You is certain sure as could ever be?” Skipsy added an interestingly intricate sideways weave to his infernal endless rocking, and Harry began to feel seasick simply from following his progress. It was like tracking the dance of a rather withered cobra. “Really, really,  _really_ —truly, Young Master is not liking to be woken early, Master Harry Potter!” Skipsy whinged, insistent. Harry rolled his eyes in utter disgust.

The prat. Look at  _him_ —he’d been up since five and had repaired two classrooms already and flown miles.  

“Look,” he said sensibly, stoppering his frustration and shifting himself from foot-to-foot in an effort to keep Skipsy’s ever-moving ancientness in some sort of focus (for an elf of indeterminate years, Skipsy was quite limber). “I swear to you he won’t be angry with you, alright? On the contrary, he’s going to be pleased as punch with what I’ve brought him—“

“And what, exactly, have you brought me, Potter?” a cool drawling voice inquired.

“Young Master Draco! Young Master Draco!” Skipsy was transported instantly into absolute paroxysms of joy. “You is awake! You is here!” Harry rolled his eyes at the drama. “Master Harry Potter is  _here_ —here to call on  _you_ , Young Master Draco!”

“I can see that for myself, Skipsy; thank you,” Draco nodded acknowledgment, his voice very dry but meticulously polite. He glanced up from the joyous old elf and met Harry’s eyes straight-on, snagging them in boundless depths of pewter-grey and enlarging black pupils, and holding them captive for a long, steady stare. “The question remains, why?”

“Draco,” Harry replied evenly, not blinking, never for a second breaking the mutual goggle-fest. Now that he was actively looking, there was a brilliantly blinding vision in pure white before him. “You’re alright, then?”

It was a moment—a curiously full moment—that Harry remembered later— _and often_ \--with great clarity. The heat and bee-buzz of a sunny mid-June morning; Draco, garbed in thin white fabric from collarbone to heel; the waft of newly shorn grasses refulgent in the air and Draco’s eyes, which he’d seen in turn furious, scornful, derisive and cold as the frozen snows of the Arctic, now speaking volumes to him. They were brimful of messages telegraphed, the very signals Harry had struggled these last few long and tiring weeks to decode properly.

Harry was very conscious he’d Draco’s wand to return to him  _and_ a not-at-all spontaneous birthday present. He was even more conscious that Draco in white was stunning and he was this close to actively drooling.

 _Oh—the present!_  Harry recalled himself with a mental lurch.

A belated one, now, but Harry rather thought his old Quidditch rival might like it. Harry usually stuck to the tried-and-true when giving presents, being otherwise pants at it: a book for Hermione, something Cannons-related for Ron, and sweets for everyone else, if required. He still wasn’t accustomed to spending freely; had, in fact, been forced by Hermione to purchase some new gear before she’d left for Australia, and his gifting list had always been terribly short. Draco—or so he hoped—would probably want something useful, like a broom repair kit or polish, or maybe greaves or new laces. He’d every intention of buying some small thing along those lines when he’d ventured to Diagon.

But the Quidditch shop had brand new stock on their brand new shelving, and Harry was sucked in like a mark at a carny, ‘ooh’-ing and ‘ahh’-ing over the latest racing brooms imported in from Bulgaria and Italy, which hadn’t been released on the British market previously due to the war. And there it had been, in pride of place over the till counter: the finest, fastest, most elegant broom he’d ever seen, only one of a hundred to be sold in England, and Harry had gone ahead straightaway and bought it, strictly on impulse—it wasn’t ever something he’d buy for himself, no, but as a present? Well, then…he’d Galleons to burn and that particular specimen was so very, very ‘Draco Malfoy’. Crafted of supple grey wood, with pale, silvery twigs neatly spliced in, and sporting deep green pin striping and weaving, it screamed ‘Slytherin!’ in much the way it screamed ‘faster than any fucking broom you’ve ever ridden, mate! Are you _scared_?’

Harry put his slightly sweaty hand out—not the one holding the Shrunken packets—tentatively, and Draco took it within his cool, clean one. Quickly; without the slightest hesitation of any sort.

“I’m well, thank you,” Draco replied. No sneer, no tundra permafrost; just that well-remembered high-class drawl slathering across Harry’s senses like melted butter. It struck Harry hard that he was damned glad for the chance to hear it, still.

“Better now…Harry.”

��

Draco Malfoy had made a career of knowing all about Harry Potter. Best to know thine enemy, he justified, though not in so many pretty words at age eleven, straight after the decisive rejection that had set Harry firmly on the other side of the ideological fence. Draco had fumed and brooded and finally arrived at the conclusion  _he’d_  need to be the one to show Harry up for the egotistical little git he was. Clearly, no one else had the guts to do it. That goal—with various adjustments and tweaking over the years, as they both matured—sustained admirably him through 6th Year. Somehow, though, the Dark Lord’s demands of murder under duress far exceeded Harry’s villainous gittishness. This was not what Draco had been expecting when his father had talked up the Dark Lord, this senseless terror. Nor was he at all agreeable with being reduced to a mere pawn, with no choice in the matter. After witnessing the horror that had been Professor Burbage’s final moments, there was only so far his own willing suspension of disbelief could carry him.

By the middle of 6th Year, it was abominably clear  _he_ was the one who’d chosen the ‘wrong sort of people’, not Potter. It was evident, as well, that it was too late to skive Death Eating, though Draco did his very best to shoulder all responsibility for his fallen family’s welfare, with the Dark Lord’s addled expectation he off the most powerful Wizard since the Lord’s own first incarnation. (Surely, Draco thought, the Dark Lord couldn’t seriously believe the Headmaster and the Hero would remain blissfully unaware of Draco’s hand in the matter, nor be unable to counter such a small breach in Hogwarts defenses as a ruddy piece of magical furniture?)

There, too, was a miniscule bit of Draco’s subconscious mind that fully expected to be saved. The Potter git had pulled miracles out his arse time and again; why not one now, when Draco needed it so badly? A simple Imperio—Veritaserum, even—would serve to force him to reveal his involvement, the details of the vacuous plotting, too, and then this nonsense would be over before it even began. Draco himself would likely be consigned to Azkaban, but it’d be worth it see the Dark Lord checkmated and trounced by Boy Wonder. But no miracle was forthcoming, and Harry only alternately glared at Draco and dogged his footsteps faithfully and furtively, clearly not comprehending, and the, oh, so powerful Headmaster did not lift a friggin’ finger to stop Draco from beavering away at fixing the devilish Cabinet.

Draco, ultimately cast forth from Hogwarts upon the mercy of Voldemort (which was entirely non-existent; no real ‘Lord’  _he_ , and completely forfeit the required sense of  _noblesse oblige_  Malfoys had been bred to, along with proper nostrils) and under the dubious tutelage of his mad-as-a-hatter aunt and his turncoat Professor Snape (and was that so  _not_  a surprise— _not_!—to find his mentor so firmly entrenched in the Death Eaters camp), discovered, as he’d already suspected, that he’d no interest in ‘who-the-fuck-cares?’ frenzied bloodshed and berserker havoc. Every small act of torture required of him left him wracked as well, and Harry Potter was but a bright, distant speck on Draco’s receding grey horizon. A sometime Saviour, who’d no care left within him, apparently, for the sheep abandoned in his wake, who’d rent the wool from their own eyes so belatedly. Draco, being one of the cannier Wizards of his generation, did the best he could with what tools he had, and countered the Dark Lord’s orders in every passive way possible, short of having himself AK’d outright for insubordination. And he hated it—and Potter—with a welling, swamping passion, for ditching him like so much rubbish.

And Harry—that git Potter—Harry fucking disappeared.

It wasn’t till the Snatching that Draco allowed himself to truly hope once more. And it was at that very moment of truth, when they were shoving and puling at him to identify a battered, nearly unrecognizable Boy, that he knew precisely why he’d been so utterly demoralized at the patent lack of rescue and why the rumours of Harry’s disappearance had left him further devastated: he’d desired Harry Potter all these years, and not just as casual mate or even a close confidante.

And, after that, it was all helter-skelter, till the Trials, when Draco finally slid gratefully into his niche. It wasn’t Potions—not as if they’d let him near a lab, the doughty Ministry blokes who’d confined him and his family on trumpery excuses—or Arithromancy, though he did his fair share of logic puzzles and whatnot to escape the dulling hours of boredom, nor even Divination, though he’d scrying in his blood, as well as Seeking. It was Goyle, once rescued from certain death by him and Harry both and still doomed, that inspired Draco. He owed it to struck-dumb, gormless Greg, his loyal supporter, his best mate when Harry wasn’t, and he owed it to Vince’s memory, for having allowed the events that led to his death roll on unimpeded; to debate—to take up arms and fight the good fight—to convince and persuade the adults in power as he’d never successfully managed before.

For Draco, it was an honourable debt as well, owed to a frightened Pansy and a sardonic Blaise; to stupid sulky Nott, tarred by the same brush that sullied  _his_  father; to sad-eyed Millie, who’d never supported the Dark Lord, not really, but who was still Slytherin. To Hogwarts itself, its silly Hat and its Founders, and his tarnished memory of his late Headmaster, who’d offered Draco something he’d sourly regretted not taking ever since.

Draco became his own barrister, and the strident spokesman for the ones who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—defend themselves. And, for once in his long string of failures, his grand scheme was startlingly effective, and Harry’s unexpected and unsolicited support practically cemented each and every victory. Every concession he requested for his Housemates and others like them was granted; every allowance made for the undeniable fact they’d all been only  _children--_ merely  _children_ , heartlessly used for adult’s nefarious purposes, was agreed to, and Draco, in a rather amazing manner, earned again his own self-respect and returned to his former proud posture, chin up and challenging. He’d only ever required some arena to succeed in; that this was the one was a Merlin-blessed relief.

Which was how Harry Potter found him, on the hazy-bright morning of June 19th.

“Young Master Draco! Young Master Draco!” Skipsy dithered, capering madly with effervescent glee. “You is awake! You is here! Master Harry Potter is here--here to call on  _you_ , Young Master Draco!”

Draco was damned glad to know he hadn’t needed to be rescued yet again—turned out rescue wasn’t what he’d wanted in the first place. Harry had helped, yes, but it was his skill with words that had bought his own freedom and what he required now of Harry was something far more complicated. Now, at last, they were equals and right here and right now—Draco exulted;  _finally_ —was his second whack at befriending Potter. And perhaps a great deal  _more_.

“I can see that, Skipsy; thank you.”  Draco cocked a slow, wheaten brow at Harry, testing the waters. “The question is,  _why_?”

Harry swallowed; Draco feasted his eyes on the movement, the twitchiness that was so ‘Harry’. His irritation at Potter’s annoying mannerisms had slowly morphed into enduring fondness. “Draco,” the git said—rustily, his voice all over creaky and raw, like after the Fiendfyre—“You alright, then?”

Draco fell in love all over again, smack dab on his own doorstep, and it was all there, he knew, every glutting throb of want and need and  _please_ , clear as the morning dazzling his pale, reflective eyes, his wide-open features. No disguising it now; no denying it, either. And he didn’t care to—it was more than time to cease his infernal habit of secrecy.

He stuck his hand out forthrightly to meet Harry’s extended one, feeling remarkably hopeful—confident, as he’d not been before. The git had  _not_ been oblivious when Draco’s eyes had followed him, the mirrors of his soul a feverish pewter, all throughout the daily drudgery of testifying. He’d _not_ been able to shrug off Draco’s admiring gazes, nor discount the avid, desirous eyes that lingered salaciously on his arse, his expressive hands, his wiry frame and muscled thighs, visible only sometimes under the ancient fusty black robes he’d worn to the Ministry day after day till finally someone—Granger, perhaps?—had taken him in hand and finally outfitted him with new robes.

“Better now…Harry,” Draco replied, as calmly as he could with a whirlwind of glee roaming his innards, and waggled his eyebrows comically in an effort to make the clumsy berk smile in return, just as he’d used to do with the younger Slytherins when they were nervous. That was Draco’s first tentative step in a seduction of a different sort entirely. He stepped closer, tripping on purpose over Skipsy’s bouncing bulk, having mapped out his master plan already, in the midst of repetitive hours of serious fantasy-driven wanking.

Harry caught Draco’s deliberately sliding elbow with remarkable speed, with the same hand he’d just used to shake Draco’s with, and took a deep, sharp gust of breath that Draco felt rushing past his own flushed cheeks. They were seeing eye to eye at last, and Skipsy’s excited dithering had faded unnoticed into the far distant background.

 _Perfect, perfect, perfect_ , he thought to himself.  _Keep it going, Malfoy_.

“You’ve brought me something, Harry?” he inquired artlessly, cocking his head and darting his tongue out to dampen his lips; his present was right here, under his nose, clutching his flexing forearm. “Something…nice?” He quirked a smile, parting wet lips deliberately, and Harry’s gaze darted to them instantly, his own mouth already mid-curve and rising at the corners. “Something…I’ll be glad to receive, you say?”

Indeed, Draco considered; it was all about saying things without actually saying them. He grinned ruefully; he’d been practicing that for weeks now.

“Mmm-hmm, yeah,” Harry murmured, blinking as if befuddled, and Draco noticed out of the corner of one eye he’d fisted his other hand more firmly ‘round the tiny packets and tightened the tendons stretching the breadth of his shoulders. He noted Harry’s bruised knuckles (chapped and cracked from windburn, for the fool had obviously flown on that barely acceptable brand of broom propping up the doorframe) and the ragged fingernails, which were bitten to the quick; and he could literally  _taste_  the want like sweet acid gathering at the back of his throat. “I, er—I did, Draco,” Harry confirmed, his voice starting low and rumbley, then catching a hitch at the tail end. The halting reply did remarkable things to Draco’s squirming intestines. “I do, yes.”

Draco inhaled sharply through his nose, imagining that voice in his bed, sinking into his skin. Merlin, but he  _was_  ‘sunk’, truly. A goner, like that Muggle ship, the Titanic.

“Then come all the way in, why don’t you, you rude berk, and show me this marvelous item you’re so positive I’ll fancy.” Draco smiled widely, wicked-merry, entirely unguarded; stepping aside eagerly and opening the way clear into his home—his sanctuary. “Don’t just rot away on my doorstep. It’s not done.”

“Well…if you’re sure,” Harry hesitated yet—perhaps Skipsy’s endless dither was catching. “If you’re not busy? I don’t want to be a bother; I know it’s early yet—least for  _some_  people. I just have these to give you—“

“No bother, Harry; you’re very welcome here,” Draco grin grew with his delight, his eyes glinting in the reflection from the not to distant coldhouses. “Didn’t you puzzle that out yet, nit? I’ve been waiting.”

“Um,” Harry began, looking very much as though he wished to protest any such assumption. “Er. Really?”

“You  _are_ , Harry,” Draco assured him, and used the hand on his arm to draw Harry after. “Believe it or not, as you will, the fact remains you’re welcome here. Most…welcome.”

“Ah.” Harry must be fairly parched, Draco decided, flying all that way from wherever—London? The fabled Burrow? Draco’s mind alit instantly upon offering tea—or brekkers--or perhaps something stronger. A little dollop of a good vintage wouldn’t come amiss this celebratory moment. “Erm, okay. For a minute, then.”

“Skipsy,” Draco commanded softly, sparing a winning smile at his faithful ancient retainer, spinning circles at their feet, “if we may have tea in my parlour—and a bottle of the Jouët Cuvée, I think. Please.”  

“Yes, Young Master!” Skipsy bowed his pleasure and popped off to the non-decorative bits of the Manor post-haste.

“Oh!” Harry looked as though he might protest again; Draco squashed the thought instantly via advancing action.

“This way—up the stairs, Harry. I’m on the second level. Come, come—and bring your broom with you. I want a look at it. Your primary rudder twig’s bent, you know.”

“Oh, is it,” Harry grabbed the broom in passing and looked at it doubtfully, trailing after. “Yeah; you’re right. I’ll have to fix that before I leave or I’ll come a’scupper. D’you have a kit handy?”

“Of course I’ve a kit, Harry,” Draco grinned—just couldn’t stop, now he’d started. “I’ve loads of Quidditch supplies. Gloves, too. I’d say you could make good use of them. You’ll be welcome.”

Harry blushed at the repetition; it was glorious to see—all that skin flushed pink and damp. Draco swallowed and pressed a discreet hand to his groin. “Um, thanks,” his visitor mumbled, and managed to follow Draco down the hallway without bolting outright or coming up with yet more excuses to do so. “This place is rather…large,” he eked out, by way of small talk. “And confusing.”

Draco struggled mightily not to frighten Harry off by leering too toothily. He’d have to advance crabwise and carefully or the nit might still duck out on him yet, and he didn’t want that—oh, no, not at all.

��

“Maybe,” Draco allowed, glancing back over his shoulder with what must surely have been a wink. Harry blinked at him and kept trotting. The manor was ever so huge. “But you get used to it, growing up here. Families used to be larger in the old days, Harry. And everyone would gather at the main house if there was danger and hunker down for the duration.”

“Really?” Harry was curious; Binn’s take on the history of magic had been boring at best, but here was someone who’d a family that had been a crucial part of all of those centuries. The name ‘Malfoy’ was all over the textbook he and his mates had used in Hogwarts; he’d never failed to sneer then, because Ron did. Hermione had kept her lips sealed when they had, but her eyes had been faintly disapproving. “Wasn’t your family in France, then?” he asked. ‘Malfoy’ was a Frenchified name, sure enough. Not like Potter; good Anglo stock, he—or Welsh, maybe, at a stretch. He wished for a moment he knew more of his mother’s family, but Draco was speaking again.

“Yes, but we Malfoys came over with the Norman Conquest. Been here a thousand years, now,” Draco replied calmly, ushering them—finally—to a suite of adjoining rooms that made Harry’s bedroom at Grimmauld Place look like a veritable rubbish heap. Harry gaped.

“It’s beautiful!” he gasped, and was instantly drawn to the floor-to-ceiling windows, with their view of gently rolling hills and fields, verdant in the humid morning. The greens closer were all closely mown and there looked to be any number of outbuildings of all sorts of architectural styles.

“Nice, right?” Draco was asking, and Harry could hear the pride—and pleasure?--in his tone. “I’ll take you out for a tour ‘round the place as soon we’ve your broom fixed up. You’ll enjoy the paddocks and stables, too; we’ve pegasi, you know,” he added proudly, and then turned to thank the elf popping in with the tray.

“Oh!” Harry exclaimed and turned away from the view. “Well--I don’t think—I mean, I came without much warning. Aren’t you, er, busy with—with stuff?”

Draco grinned and shrugged. “It’s already summer season, Harry. Everyone’s abroad if they can be or sorting themselves out still—and I can’t leave, you know; I’ve probation.”

“Oh…yeah,” Harry remembered. He’d thought it a master stroke, worthy of Ron, that Draco had come up with that clause. It was sop to the vengeance-hungry haters, who demanded some sort of visible humbling of the group who’d wreaked such destruction, and it seemed to assure the Wizangamot and other ‘responsible adults’ that the deviant youth the Junior Death Eaters had been would be properly reconditioned and become functioning adults themselves. And—Harry was very pleased with this part—it was all labeled ‘voluntary’, where and how it was served, but it really wasn’t, not the way Draco had set it up, and people (shopkeepers and professionals and the like, many on the side of the Light) had to allow the Death Eater children their fair chance to learn trades and professions—it was mandatory. No one could be denied on the basis of their past, which was how Mr. Olivander had found himself with a still-mute Greg Goyle on his hands as an apprentice and Madame Pomfrey’d been saddled with a startling eager Pansy Parkinson. “Where will  _you_  be assigned, then?” he asked, suddenly reminded to be very curious. He’d not see Draco often after this meeting, and especially if he didn’t make an effort to stay in contact. They hardly moved in the same social circles, he and Draco.

Wait! Harry thought. Were there even still ‘circles’? Would the Purebloods continue to stick to themselves or would the Ministry manage to force everyone to ‘get along’?

“At Hogwarts, Harry—with my parents,” Draco replied. “Come and have some champagne now and let me have a look-see at your broom.”

Harry went, still ever so slightly leery. He couldn’t deny the well of gladness fountaining up his throat, though. He’d be at Hogwarts, too. Already was, most days. “Er…” he began, thrusting his hand out—the one with the packets this time. “I’ve just brought these for you. Don’t you want to open them?”

“Is it my wand, Harry?” Draco asked, carelessly enough. He waved a casual hand at the two brown parcels done up with butcher’s string. “Just lay them on the table, if you would. A drink first, yeah? I’d say we earned it, wouldn’t you?”

“Ah!” Harry was taken back yet again—he dropped his broom, even—alcohol and so early in the morning; his Weasley breakfast had yet to settle comfortably into his stomach! Molly had thrown herself into a frenzy of cookery lately, likely to keep her mind from the lack of mouths clamouring ‘round her table. “I don’t think—I really shouldn’t.“

“Absolutely  _you’ve_  earned it, Harry; come on, don’t say no so easily,” Draco coaxed and drew near enough to niftily exchange Harry’s crumpled parcels for a crystal flute full to the brim with bubbly. He was barely a foot away from Harry’s person, casually gorgeous in white-on-white silk, and it was all Harry could do not to sniff him. Or just drop his jaw and fall like an utter loon into those eyes.

Very warm, those eyes. Bloody infernos. And Draco Malfoy was as impossible elegant as he’d always been; maybe more so, now that his pointy-ness had resolved to clean, pure lines and intriguing shadows. He’d a chiseled look to him, like the Norman knights of yore, and Harry, with his earthier mien and shockingly different features—green,  _green_  eyes and a bloody mane in place of a style, and by Merlin, don’t forget the bleeding  _scar_!—admired it, rather. Rather  _a lot_. He approved of the way Draco smelt, too. Citrusy and clean, as if his morning ablutions involved standing under a lemon-scented waterfall.

And all that sorting out and telling over of ‘Draco-attributes’ brought on any number of extended images, which caused Harry to gulp his champagne down his gullet far too quickly and wind up coughing.

                                                                                                                                        ��

Draco was relishing this moment. He basked in every second and the anticipation of every next second, and knew it. He had Harry where he wanted him, with no one rambling ‘round to intrude, and the distinct possibility of yet more Harry in the offing, and a decent vintage was the perfect oil for social niceties—and seduction.

Not that he’d jump Harry’s bones unless he was sure it was mutual. He wasn’t a villain—had just gone to great lengths to prove that to all and sundry. But this…this was so perfect. Everything he’d dreamt of and more.

He whacked Harry sharply on the back; the idjit git had a Galleon or five of Jouët up his nose and was hacking up a lung in reaction. “Twat!” he scolded. “That’s worth more than liquid gold, by the ounce—don’t waste it, Harry!”

“S-Sorry!” Harry gasped. “It’s just I’m not used to—to drinking! This early, I mean.”

“I know,” Draco grinned. “Which is why it’s best to savour it, yes? And it’s not as though  _I_ drink this stuff all the time, either, Harry. It’s Jouët—not your average, run-of-the-mill house swill.”

“Oh—oh, yes.” Harry nodded as if he’d known that already and took a tiny, careful sip for his next one.

“Sit, please,” Draco commanded, and grabbed his arm, herding him. Harry came along nicely and Draco pulled him down on the sofa right next to his own cushion, casting the parcels on the low table that sat slightly off-center before it. “And do take it slowly, Harry; enjoy the taste. Tell me what’s up with Hogwarts in the meantime, will you? My parents Owl me constantly, but not much detail, really.”

“Well…” Harry started slowly, ticking over in his mind all they’d done and still had to do. The list was immense and daunting. The Malfoys Senior had been—amazingly—very helpful. “We’ve got the Great Hall mostly back in order and we’re working on securing the foundations and underlying structure. We think Dumbledore himself likely held some of the towers together, they’re so crumbly—especially the Astronomy one—oh! Sorry!” He caught himself at Draco’s wince and winced himself, remembering.

“It’s alright,” Draco hastened to assure him. Then they were both very conscious of his hand, resting on the brocade next to Harry’s thigh. “I—I’d like to have a go at tackling that one, actually. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Oh, no--I’m not in charge,” Harry rushed to say. “Professor—Headmistress McGonagall is. There’s a lot of us, you know. People with no place to go just yet and the—the ex-Death Eaters, all the ones acquitted, um,  who’re doing their service work, and then there’s some volunteers from overseas. Viktor’s come, too, to help us.”

“Has he?” Draco’s eyebrows went up; he didn’t much fancy Harry and Viktor in the same location for any length of time. Krum was a known playboy and Harry—Harry was ripe for the plucking, as it were.  _His_  plucking, not stupid Krum’s. “Fancy that.  _I’ll_  be there shortly,” he stated, to make it clear Harry would have him to contend with, perhaps sooner than he’d ever expected. “This next week, I should think. I’ll be wrapped up with the Ministry by then, and everyone’s assignments will be sorted.”

Harry blushed, and Draco edged his hand closer, till it lay heavy on Harry’s leg; how could he not, then, when it was right there? This couldn’t be this easy, could it? No—nothing was ever particularly easy, not with Potter. Made it all the more worthwhile, really.

“Brill!” Harry beamed, and then caught himself, and backed his smile down a notch. “I mean—that’s great, Draco. We could definitely use the help,” he gabbled, “since there’s only just two months left to us to have it all cleared out and put back to rights. That’s what I meant to say.”  Draco watched his every change of expression like a hawk: Harry apparently hadn’t known he’d be coming to Hogwarts—hadn’t bothered to enquire of anyone as to his plans, even. That was not so good to hear; why hadn’t the git wondered what he’d be getting up to? Was his old school rival so removed from Harry’s thoughts?

“So much yet to do if it’s to be open by term,” Harry was still going on about Hogwarts, jabbering away a mile a minute, “and we’re all run off our heels just with sorting out the classrooms and laying by supplies, and then there’s the Library and grounds yet and the greenhouses—“

“Harry,” Draco interrupted calmly, “shut it. We’ll sort it, believe me. We’ve resources yet.” He casually deposited his glass and shifted his other hand—the entire arm, actually—so that it lay across the back of the sofa, just brushing Harry’s shoulders. Harry squirmed instantly at the heat of it, and Draco wondered if he’d the innate good sense to glance over Draco’s buttoned-down fly, which was bulging, and perhaps draw a few intelligent conclusions.

Likely not, given it was Harry. Speccy git; blind as the proverbial bat in a belfrey. Draco took a deep breath and opened his mouth to say something rather more…incendiary—stir up the waters a bit. It seemed well past time to get his oar firmly in, as it were, especially if Krum was possibly tacking in for an assault from the lee.

“More Jouët, Harry?”

��

Harry was, er…Harry was extremely hot-and-bothered. Not what he’d quite expected to be, trapped as he was in the loathsome bowels of Malfoy Manor (Draco’s personal parlour, actually), with his, ah, well, ‘nemesis’ (and  _secret cohort in the tricksy business of influencing the Wizengamot to do the right thing_ , for the want of a better way of putting what they’d managed to pull off together) pressed up snug against his side, as he pinched a fragile glass of fine golden French wine between his fingers. Electrically-charged jolts shot through him with every exhalation (were those Draco’s ribs? He was so thin, Malfoy, but then there was a nice layer of muscle, too. Harry could feel it, sliding against his elbow—and he was so warm, almost feverishly hot, and smelt excellent. Harry liked the feel of that arm behind him--felt  _safe_ , rather) and his fingers were not trembling only through a great mustering of willpower.

“Yeah—er,” Harry pulled himself together with some effort. He’d a purpose in coming here; he’d do well to remember it before Malfoy kicked him out. “You’ll be wanting your wand back, right? I, um, brought it, and also a br—and, and, well…something else.“

“And what, Harry? What else did you bring me?” 

Merlin, but Draco’s habitual high-class drawl could be very—very exciting, when it wasn’t tainted foul by derision, Harry realized. He swallowed hard. Sipped, and swallowed again. Draco’s hand, the one that had been hovering just off his collarbone, the one attached the length of warm flesh just behind his head, curled and flexed, the fingers wrapping possessively ‘round the smooth curve of Harry’s shoulder as it sloped into his arm. He leaned into it, helplessly, unable to resist.  

“And a present,” he croaked, shuddering just a bit. The hand was, er...very comforting. He was so  _hard_. That was bloody embarrassing. “For your birthday,” he forged on, bravely, not stopping now for the life of him. “Just past, right? I mean, you’ve just had it and I’ve brought a present for you—for  _it_ ; it’s not much, really; I mean, I know you have—you’ve probably lots of them already, right? But this one—this--I just saw it in the shop, y’see, and it was—it was  _so_.“

“Thank you,” Draco slid in smoothly and Harry stilled his traitorous tongue, terribly grateful to be halted before he made a total arse of himself. “It’s wonderful, Harry—just what I wanted.”

“What?” Harry blinked at his champagne flute, then turned his head and blinked at Draco, who was—without doubt—physically closer than he’d been a moment ago. Altogether. As in, they were aligned all down one side, at hip, thigh and shoulder, with Draco’s hand rubbing slow circles against his upper arm, the heat of his palm sinking through Harry’s thin T-shirt sleeve and permeating his skin. Harry could feel the motions Draco made breathing and even the puffs of individual breaths on his cheek. It smelt of mint and citrus.

“My present. It’s absolutely perfect.” Draco murmured, those uppity tones of his just deliciously enticing. Harry took a rather large drink of his champagne, shutting his eyes in desperate hopes of blocking out temptation. In fact, he knocked the remainder of his Jouët back like a trooper, and then—then he remembered.

“You—you haven’t opened it yet! It’s still on the table!”

“No….” Draco smiled like a Nile crocodile, eyeing an unwary marsh bird for supper. “But I plan to, very soon.” He topped up Harry’s flute with a careless wave of the hand not gripping Harry’s shoulder and then, oh, so casually, pressed that same hand flat against Harry’s diaphragm, spreading his fingers wide. “Do drink up, Harry. There’s more where that came from.”

 _Dangerous_! Harry’s good sense shrieked. His eyes widened in automatic response; his breath quickened. This was very dangerous! He could land himself in some serious hot water and the day was already steamy and close and, and  _why,_  exactly, was Draco being so very? Very…seductive?

“What gives?” Harry demanded, mustering up a scowl through the melt. He scooted away from the hands—as far as he could manage, that is, as the hands weren’t letting go. “What’s going on with you, Malfoy? Why’re you plying me with alcohol at ten in the morning and why the hell are you being so— _so_?”

“Welcoming?” Draco suggested. His brows arched and that antediluvian smile stayed firmly in place. “Eager?  _Interested_? Why do you think, Harry?”

“I—I don’t know,” Harry frowned. He stared at Draco, openly puzzled. “That’s why I’m asking, git.”

��

“Well, Harry,” Draco began—and stopped. “It’s like this, actually,” he tried again. And couldn’t get past  _that_ , either. Harry stared at him, his features reflecting a most curious cross betwixt and between a raptor and rabbit, as he was both visibly quivering with pent-up tension—indeed, practically twitching his nose in agitation  _and_ just as equallynarrow-eyed and tight-jawed, his eagle-eyed gaze downright bloodthirsty, ready to tear into whatever reasoning Draco might trot out for his examination. Say ‘hullo’ to Animagus Harry, Draco thought wryly to himself—lagomorph-peregrine mix of doom, ready to swoop down and rend him to pieces with painful disbelief the moment he opened his mouth to confess his…long-nurtured wishes.

Draco hesitated. The words simply weren’t flowing, for once.  

“You know,” he attempted once more, “Harry, I’ve always…”

“Always?” Harry prompted. “Always what, Malfoy?” Draco could almost hear the snap of a gryphon’s razored beak. He could envision the quiver of imaginary whiskers.

“Er,” Draco went on, not at all eloquently. “I’ve always wanted...to…er.”

Suddenly, it seemed a bit risky—not to mention risqué—to be telling Harry flat-out he’d plans for his cock, and those plans involved a visit to his bedroom (just a short stroll across the Aubusson), where that appendage could be put to excellent use and also, possibly, if Harry was so inclined, there might be the later involvement of his largish selection of old school ties (he’d be purchasing new, of course, come August) and the oversized knobs on his huge four-poster. For he’d this reoccurring fantasy…well. But right now—this very minute, in fact--he’d this deep need to strip Harry starkers and climb all over him, so their cocks rubbed together, and there was just simply skin on skin, and he could snog that lower lip Harry kept nibbling on so deliciously and stick his tongue up Harry’s—well! Perhaps it was more to the point to  _show_  Harry. Draco had learnt the value of his actions as well as his words, this last year, and was the better man for it.

Besides, the twat, being a Gryffindor and therefore presumably not a terribly deep thinker, would likely get that, far more easily than he’d understand—or accept--Draco’s longwinded explanation of opposites attracting, animal magnetism and so forth. Also, there’d be much less opportunity for Harry to bolt, should he get the wind up his magnificent arse.

“Look, come with me, will you?” Disentangling himself enough to do so, Draco sprang to his feet. He kept a hand always on his captive, though, and let it slide casually enough to Harry’s wrist, which he then latched onto like a bear trap and tugged at, impatiently.

“What? Why?” Harry resisted him, digging his heels in, possibly for the sheer, bloody principle of the thing.

“Because I need to show you something,” Draco frowned and yanked a little harder. “And time’s wasting here, so prise your bum off my couch, will you? Come  _on_. I’m not planning on hexing you, prat.”

 “What d’you have to show me, anyway?” Harry ignored the slight but was clearly still suspicious, though he did stand up. “Is it something Dark?” he frowned, ‘“cause you’ll have to call Kingsley and the Aurors for that—I’m not touching that stuff, Malfoy, not if I don’t have to. I get enough as it is at Hogwarts—“

“ _No_ , you arse!” Draco snorted impatiently and slipped ‘round Harry, so he could herd him in the right direction. “All the nasty shite’s been carted away already…well, all that they could find, that is. I’m sure Father’s got a few more, er, ‘antiquities’ stashed here and there, but that’s not it. Just come with me, alright?”

“And--and you’re not going to hex me?” On the verge of stumbling forward, Harry apparently needed to be clear on this one important point. Given their history, Draco could understand.

“No, Harry, I’m not. Far from it,” Draco murmured, his voice dipping to low and soothing as he brought his head in close to Harry’s. Greatly daring—for this could tip Harry off before he was ready to deal with the immediate consequences and the doorway was too damned close in here—he leaned in nearer yet and licked Harry’s ear. “It’s good; trust me,” he whispered.

That was the winning ticket, apparently. Harry, with one last brief, regretful glance back at his abandoned glass of champagne, obediently went where Draco led him.

This turned out to be an absolutely outsize room—as Harry expected--with a matching outsize four-poster bed set dead-center, hung with—surprise, surprise!—pure white draperies and dressed with a satiny, tufted coverlet. There were easily twenty pillows piled and plumped at one end of the bed, and it, and indeed all the furniture, was crafted of dark, heavily inlaid, carven and scrolled woods. There was a sizeable hearth and two doors set in the wall opposing the French windows, which opened onto a largish balustraded balcony. Arranged before the windows was a divan and several easy chairs, including one which Harry (had Draco been interested in quizzing him, which he wasn’t) would’ve sworn was a Muggle Barca-Lounger, done up in blood-red leather, one of the very few blobs of colour in the cavernous and brilliantly white-upon-white space Draco called his bedroom. The various bureaux, whatnot tables, desk and so forth all stood upon realistically carved talons, each clutching great round balls of smooth wood, which Harry—again, if asked—would’ve remarked was yet another oddity in the series encountered thus far. He continued to glance around him with great curiosity, even as Draco grasped his shoulder and edged him toward the wide expanse of his bed.

“What’re those?” Harry queried, joggling ‘round on his toes to peer over Draco’s blocking shoulder and apparently finally giving into his visibly overpowering sense of curiosity. He pointed to the doors, outlines barely discernable grey shadows—as in Draco’s sitting room, there was no colour present but Harry’s own vivid colouring and the flush feathering Draco’s high cheekbones and throat. “Where do they go?”

Draco indulged him, though he was patently uninterested in giving a tour, and replied, “En suite and dressing room, Harry. Obviously. I’m hardly going to traipse down the corridor to have a whiz, am I now?” He grasped Harry’s arms and jiggled him gently. “Um…eyes on me, please? You’ll notice I’m attempting to seduce you.” 

He’d not once lifted hands from Harry; with the warning delivered, he put his fingers to a different use, sliding them easily ‘round the buttons of Harry’s Muggle Levis.

“’Obviously’, huh?” Harry muttered darkly, shaking his head. “Oh—what? Seduce?  _What_ , ‘seduce’?” Harry demanded, peering up with renewed suspicion. “ _Seduce_  says I’m not willing to play, Malfoy, and  _I_  never said that, but you’ve not exactly asked, either, have—“

“Are you, Harry? Willing?”

Harry went red as a cherry and bobbed his windswept head. “B-But.”

“But?”

Harry’s Levis were gaping—sagging, too, as Harry hadn’t bothered to replace his ancient belt and he’d a trim waist--and no briefs to prevent Draco from gathering Harry’s half-erect dick up eagerly and palming it. Draco grinned: there was an eloquent subtext here, if ever there was such a thing: having Harry arrive unannounced and half-clothed for a visit—and Harry had a nice heft to him as he grew rigid and hot between Draco’s caressing fingers. He murmured his approval of that, shifting clinging fabric with the other hand and watching happily as the denims fell another short distance, leaving Harry throttled at the knees and teetering.

“Oy! Watch it, Malfoy!” Harry grabbed at Draco’s upper arm for balance and Draco decided—finally—that enough was enough: slow, sweet seduction was vastly overrated. He snogged the ungainly prat, swooping down that last inch or two and easing his tongue sinuously past the partly opened lips, dry and salty-sweet from the Jouët and windburn, plunging deep, so that Harry half-murmured and half-gargled in pleased response.

“But?” Draco asked, some moments later, when he’d shed his own drawstring sleep pants and they’d both engaged in a flurry of shirt removal. “You never finished what—“

“I don’t bottom,” Harry stated pugnaciously, his saliva smeared chin resolving into granite. “Won’t do it, so don’t even bother asking, Malfoy.”

Draco raised his eyebrows in pained surprise. “I wasn’t actually planning to, but why, as a matter of interest? Bad experience, Harry?”

“That fucking bastard MacMillan,” Harry was fair on his way to snarling, his eyes snapping with ill temper. “Had the nerve to back me—me!—into a broom closet and try and bend me over! I hexed his bollocks off, the prick, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat!”

“Ah, well,” Draco patted him soothingly on the small of his back and drifted his lips across Harry’s furrowed brow. “No fear here—I like it; prefer it, even.” He jerked his chin toward the bed, patiently waiting, and asked, “Er, speaking of—shall we? I’m not getting any younger here, Harry.”

Harry snorted and stepped backwards, taking Draco with him. “No, you’re not, which is why I’m here, incidentally. Question is—“

“Yes?” Draco took advantage of landing squarely on top of Harry to do a few things he’d been fantasizing about these last few months: nipple twisting and the like, and some pointed gnawing on Harry’s delineated ribcage.

“Why haven’t you opened your present yet? Or your wand—you should check it; make sure it still works properly,” Harry asked, puzzled, but still arching his back up under the humid caress of Draco’s mouth.  

“Don’t the elves ever feed you, Harry?” Draco ignored him, focusing instead on the ridges of bone floating beneath skin only lightly haired and stretched thin over Harry’s ribcage. “If they do, it’s not enough. You’re all skin and bones. Practically transparent.”

“I’ve—been—busy, Malfoy!” The nip Draco gave Harry’s hipbone accounted for his sudden gasp; when Draco glanced up his eyes had fallen shut and his features relaxed into a study of pleasurable anticipation. Not bad work for a morning that had begun well before a civilized hour, Draco decided, and sent his tongue off exploring the intriguing crease between Harry’s bollocks and his thigh.

Hmmm. Sweat and male—writhing male. Harry twitched, his cock slapping Draco’s cheekbone and Draco took it, lips stretching thin to swallow it down, as Nagini had engulfed her victims. But Harry was no ‘victim’; he was food for the soul. Wet and sloppy, pretzel rod salty, gagging Draco as the blood came rushing pell-mell to bulk up cartilage. Draco budged his shoulders between Harry’s knees and knocked him completely backwards off his propping elbows, flat onto the mattress, following that with nary a nip or a worrisome tooth misplaced as he swarmed to pin Harry’s befurred legs to the bed. He sucked hard as blazes, his cheeks hollowed out with effort.

“Fuck! Fuck Fuck!” Harry yelped, and grabbed Draco’s head with punishing fingers. Draco groaned and thought madly of doubling Harry’s cock; tripling it and taking it in every hole he had, slithering its slimy trail across his skin endlessly, till he would come from the anticipation alone.

He was forcibly and abruptly rolled arse over tea kettle instead; Harry grimly parting his mouth from its prize and manhandling him over and wide open—shoving hard hands behind kneecaps, slamming an already sucking, salacious set of lips over and against Draco’s puckered anus.

“Annnghh!”

Fucking Merlin on a shitting stick—it was  _brilliant_ ; ever so brilliant. Blinding lights dancing behind his eyelids and sparks shooting up his spine  _brilliant_.

Draco sagged into the tongue breaching him and drooled instantly, listing brain in stasis. And Harry—the clean-cut, Golden Boy, Saviour  _wunderkind_ —tongue-fucked him into the bouncing mattress with no halt for breath and no sign of ceasefire.

“Good, yeah?” Harry smacked his lips during a break for air  _years_  later; Draco hadn’t the wherewithal left to even open his eyes. He only wriggled his bum in eager invitation, shivers racking him.

“Nnnn,” he managed, and even that was an effort.

 _Shag me, shag me; come_  on _, shag me_ , he willed silently, and then forgot even to pray for it when Harry whispered, “Lubricious!” and slapped them both haphazardly with viscous goo, patting it into Draco’s wet hole with careful raggedy fingertips, smearing his dick with much too much.

“Ready for me?” Harry asked, but he didn’t seem to expect an answer. “Draco?”

There was cock dancing at his hole, poking insistently at him, and Draco rocked back on his knees to get to it sooner, gilt-blond hair tangling into his lashes. Anticipation—oh, it would bloody murder him one day, along with his own deep-seated curiosity. His  _want_.

Draco blinked rapidly to clear his vision of stray sweat droplets and begged Salazar silently that he be taken at just that moment, on the cusp of—of absolutely everything he’d ever hung on for.

“Hell, yes, you git! Give it to me! Give it to me  _now_ , Harry!”  

Draco pressed his face into the corner of a pillow, whimpering, when it came. It felt like Harry was bloody stuffing one of Hogwarts marbled pillars up his innards—too tight, too hot, too much. He was overtaken, consumed by the weight of this fierce thing forcing its way inside him, so unlike any other prick he’d felt. Blaise had been light and slick and elegant; the Ravenclaw he’d experimented with in 6th year had been bigger maybe than Harry, but he’d finesse, which Harry apparently lacked. This pried into his gut and hurt like the bloody dickens and trailed salt and lube like acid.

He fumbled himself against it, moaning weakly. So good.

“You alright?” Draco could hear the frown colouring Harry’s question. Didn’t have to look at him to know he was biting his lip in consternation.

“Yeah, yeah,” he groaned. “Keep going, Harry—it’s perfect”.

 _Wasn’t_ perfect. Was hot and horridly uncomfortable and Harry hadn’t a clue, clearly. Draco wasn’t stretched enough—it had been so long since his arse had seen any action other than his own fingers and Harry was thick for his length. He was jabbing at Draco, too, as if Draco were some sort of target, and he’d evidently forgotten about Draco’s prick altogether and—

“I can stop, you know,” Harry offered. He was definitely concerned—Draco could hear it.

“No! Don’t stop—don’t stop,” he moaned. “Don’ ever stop—please, Harry.”

Draco winced at himself—he’d known what he’d been doing, all along. Yes, Harry was fairly new at this (and what did he expect, given Harry’s recent past?) and yes, it was evident Harry was a total bleeding innocent when it came to pleasing a bloke (all the things he’d done so far, nice as they were, were still too soft, too gentle—even the rimming--like he was going at the Weasleyette and not realizing it was man’s body underneath him),  _but it didn’t matter_. Didn’t matter—they could get past all that shite if they had to. Draco just needed it so—needed it now--and he was so afraid it would stop; idjiit Harry would come to his senses or something stupid and remember what they’d been to each other all these years and—and he’d realize just exactly who it was he fucking.

“Are you  _sure_ , Draco—gods! So tight! You’re all twitchy—I look like I’m hurting you,” the git in question muttered, and ceased the infernal push forward abruptly. Draco took deep shuddery breaths and concentrated on relaxing his muscles. He could accommodate this; it wasn’t nonconsensual, far from it—he was just so anxious.

“Draco…”

It was right there—right there, hovering just out of reach—and Draco was going mad without it.

“Draco.”

 _Please_ , he mouthed silently, and closed his eyes against the ramifications of Harry’s hesitation.

Harry leaned in gingerly, his hands clasping Draco’s hips, and bent forward enough so that Draco could feel his welcome heat—since when did he have goosebumps?—all down his back. He pressed feather-light kisses at the points of Draco’s shoulder blades and inched his way ever so slowly, like treacle flowing sullenly in January.

“Draco,” he whispered, “Draco. Like this, yeah? I think I’ve got it.” And another tiny nipping snog laid on the flinching muscles of Draco’s back; light as down, soft as breezes. “Draco, please! Show me— _talk to me_. I want to make you feel good, prat. Tell me what to do. I’m pants at this yet.”

Draco squeezed his eyes shut harder; they were oddly damp and misty. “S’okay,” he muttered, “just keep going, Harry. Move.”

“No,” Harry said simply and stilled altogether, frozen into inaction. “No—tell me what you need, first. I want to give it to you.”

Draco smiled; couldn’t help himself. Harry Potter asking his advice on how to shag him—how could there anything more perfectly comical? How  _could_  he restrain himself from AK’ing the bastard for asking questions  _now_?

 _Fucking Hades_ , Draco swore, internally. He felt himself loosening up a little even as he grinned madly—stupid silly with inappropriate glee—into the pillowcase. It’d be alright—everything would be alright. Harry clearly cared enough for him to fret over it—and  _not_ assume he was a bloody expert or anything just because he’d done some half-arsed shite before—with that git Krum, likely.

 _That_ assumption added an acid edge to Draco’s tongue.  

“Well, there’s this thing men have…” he murmured, wriggling his hips a bit and inching farther up on his knees so he could spread himself wider. “Inside, er—you have to find it, Harry.”  How he was being so collected whilst tutoring a noob, Draco couldn’t fathom. Was it blasted maturity, creeping up on him, all unexpected?

“Yeah?” Harry was all agog; blinking like a berk. Draco risked a glance over his shoulder and saw him, gilded in sunlight, a messy-headed angel who’d alighted on Draco’s bed perhaps by mere serendipity. “Go on, then,” Harry urged him, waving a random hand. “Where is it, exactly?” He peered down at Draco’s skin, frowning, as if he needed to see through and had only just realized he couldn’t.

“Um, it’s ah, a little further in, actually.” Draco blushed. This was fucking ridiculous, giving lessons mid-shag. He’d hex Harry after, for sure. “You should keep going—and stroke my dick while you’re doing it. That’ll make it easier--for both of us.”

Harry’s hand left Draco’s hip and made its way fumbling across his belly, briefly caressing his navel, the indented lines of tensed-up muscle and ribcage. It slid down, leaving a trail of warmth behind it. Draco sighed, relaxing into the feel of Harry’s fingerprints marking him; maybe gentlemanliness wasn’t totally overrated. Then Harry wrapped his hand firmly ‘round Draco’s flagging prick and squeezed. He knew his way around one of those at least, Draco decided, as Harry began to pump him, nice and easy, and then—grip tightening like a tourniquet—harder and faster with every stroke.

Draco closed his eyes again—that was fucking perfect. It was bloody Muggle Heaven and Harry the Saint of Wankers. “Yeah, that’s it,” he encouraged eagerly, panting. “Now, keep going, Harry. Push. Just a little further.”

Harry did, and he wasn’t twitchy at all any more. It was as if the act of knowing he was giving Draco what he wanted had relieved him of any residual nervousness. The remainder of the invasion of Draco’s arse was smooth as tissue silk. Draco inhaled and exhaled harshly, biting his lower lip to the point of bloody seepage, tasting salt—and  _loved_  it.

 It was still filling, but not—not  _bad;_  not at all, not in any way. And then Draco saw sparks, almost literally, for there was Harry’s magic surging into him, at last.

It poked and prodded his prostate, and found its curling, slithery way ‘round his ‘nads and flinching gut: incandescent bright, as if he’d swallowed a ball of heat lightning. It pulsed, and he cradled it within him and saw the expanse of eternity before him for the first time ever.

It was not Dark.

“Ah!” he cried out. “Harry! Oh, Harry!”

He sounded like a bloody girl—he didn’t care one whit, one dram. Let anyone be shagged by Harry Potter and  _not_ want to speak his name; croon his name, wrap his tongue ‘round those two marvelous syllables ( _Haar-reee_!) and clutch the sound of it to him like a talisman. It was not possible to remain silent. The git’s cock was locking into him, the perfect key to pry open all his internal ridges and dark, secret valleys, and Draco shifted his knees again in a desperate reach for harmony and shoved his whole body back, rocking like a mad thing, whinging wordlessly through his nose. Harry pushed and jerkily withdrew, gasping ‘Draco!’—and then was forward again, gaining momentum, learning rhythm as he went; Draco muttering ‘Harry, Harry,’ over and over, and it was finally all exceeding mere  _brilliant_. It was  _his_.  

 

��

”D’you want to open your present now?” Harry prodded him, eager and apparently completely recovered from his earlier lassitude. “It’s great, Draco! It’s perfect for you! I can’t wait to see you flying on it!”

“Um…thought I had,” Draco grunted. Shagging, he thought, must leave Harry manic after. He himself was all ooze and goo, and pleased enough to simply loll about, waiting for his knees to check in and report for duty.

He rolled over, flinging out a lazy arm, whacking Harry accidently on the jaw with it. “Just now.”

“No…” Harry smirked at him, catching Draco’s fingers easily and nibbling on the tips. “That was just me. I got to open mine early this year. Very nice it was, too. I, er, like all the knobs and widgets.”

“You’re a prick—knobs, is it?  _Widgets_?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Harry smiled, watching how Draco’s hand curled ‘round his convulsively. “That’s next on my schedule: experimenting with knobs and widgets. But first, git, I need a bath—I’m all sweaty.”

“Really? Dibs washing your back, then,” Draco twitched his own lips, releasing just a smidge of the huge bubble of bonhomie inflating him. He’d plans for it, that back. There was Harry’s spine, which was singularly beautiful; all ridges and small hollows and sinuous like a serpent skeleton under thin, sun-browned skin. There were Harry’s shoulders, nice and wide above a nipped-in waist—oh, and those muscled thighs that had clamped him tight and hot between. There was Harry’s nape, which was terribly sensitive—how the git flinched when Draco bit it!—and Harry’s arse. He’d definite plans for  _that_. It was his, that arse, whether Harry realized it or not.

Harry grinned at him, eyes alight. Draco hadn’t seen him smile this much—ever. He couldn’t help but grin in return, for absolutely no good reason. They were idiots, the two of them. “Dibs on all of you, git. Especially the front,” Harry countered, leering, all narrow-eyed and lip-licking.  

Draco laughed aloud; Harry Potter waggling his brows and stretching his mobile mouth like that was fucking comical, too—and then sobered abruptly. There was still Viktor Krum. Harry experimenting with knobs  _and_  Krum was not on. Harry—Harry was  _his_ , now, demonstrably. He’d come gift-wrapped and Draco was keeping him.

He swallowed hard, and struck out. No flinching away from what could be hurtful—never again. Not for him.  

“For how long?” he demanded of Harry, rising up on his elbows. “Till you’re bored, Harry? Novelty’s worn off? ‘Cause that’s not my game, you know. I don’t play for anything less than keeps.” He sneered—the first real one all morning. And then waited, which was the hardest thing, ever.

“And I don’t bother with seeking anything less than the best, just so you know, prat,” Harry shrugged at him sulkily, as if Draco were making too much of it. He, too, turned abruptly serious---till another snorting laugh got past prissily thinned lips, sunbeams driving through banked clouds and brilliant with it. His eyes glittered green-gold; Draco caught his breath in wonder. “And just since I found it a little sooner than I thought I would doesn’t mean I’m fool enough to throw it away. A little credit here, Malfoy.”

“Better not, then,” Draco replied grumpily and settled back into the bounteous pillows. He closed his eyes and smacked his lips, satisfied with life and ready to nap for a few more hours.

Harry snorted in loud exasperation.

“Gods!” he exclaimed, demonstrably impatient. He jogged Draco’s shoulder sharply. “You really  _are_ bone lazy, you git. Come on, heave your arse out of bed—get up! There’s a whole day ahead of us yet, pissant, and you’re bloody well wasting it.”

Draco cracked open one grey eye and regarded his assailant. “You’re a morning person, aren’t you?” he asked Harry blandly. “I abhor morning people. I abhor _mornings_.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have said so, but maybe I am,” Harry admitted. He shrugged, jerking his bared shoulders up to his still-blushing ears. “I mean, there’s always work to do and I like to get out early and make a start on it—which is what  _you’ll_  be doing, too, come Monday next, berk, so you should practice it some. So you won’t go into shock.”

Draco opened the alternate eye—he’d rolled over again and now regarded Harry from a yard or so away (with room to spare: the mattress was massive)—and stared at him calmly. “Exactly when was it, Harry, that you last took a holiday?”

“…Er? I dunno—um,” Harry clearly had to think. Draco eyed him; the man was an open book, every passing thought and memory writ clear on his expressive face, now the spectacles were shed. There’d been the war, and then the funerals and speeches—there was the painful little frown, the wince. Then the business of the Trials, and then Hogwarts and—Harry’d not stopped for months now. “Last year, maybe?”

Draco huffed and roused himself enough to gain his knees and settle cross-legged on the sea of bed. He reached out and took Harry’s chin between a gentle finger and thumb and held it steady as he pecked Harry’s still swollen lips.

“Look, you,” he said. “It’s my birthday—it isn’t, but you know what I mean—and I want you here. Now. With me. Going nowhere else; doing nothing else, but being exactly where I can reach you. Capiche?”

Harry smiled and lifted a careful hand, covering Draco’s; pressing them both against the swallow of his long, lean throat, the ridge of his jaw.

“You didn’t really need anything, did you?” he asked rhetorically, quirking his mobile brows and peering. He did  _suspicious_  so well, Harry did, even when he was joking about. “I mean, I could’ve saved my wasted Galleons, right?”

Draco chuckled. Snogged Harry’s fingers; the corner of his merrily curling mouth. “Wrong, Potter. Presents  _are_  a necessity, even belated. But you—you are all I ever wanted, from the start.”

“Yeah?” Like blooming stars, Harry’s eyes were; brilliant in the white light of noon. It poured all around them, and filled their senses. “You mean that?”

Draco budged closer yet, wrapping long shanks ‘round Harry’s body as it twisted toward him. He snogged him again, for emphasis, just before he pushed him over. “I mean that. Remember it always.”

 


End file.
